[iwar] [fc:Attacks-put-phone-networks-under-strain]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-13 18:40:59
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 18:40:59 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Attacks-put-phone-networks-under-strain]
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Attacks put phone networks under strain

By Corey Grice, John Borland, and Ben Charny, ZDNet News
<a href="http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010911/tc/attacks_put_phone_networks_under_strain_1.html">http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20010911/tc/attacks_put_phone_networks_under_strain_1.html>

Severe congestion of U.S. communications networks in the aftermath of
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites)
cause problems with phone calls and Web-site access.

Terrorist attacks that turned the World Trade Center and New York City
into a disaster zone Tuesday severely taxed the nation's communications
networks, preventing many people from making phone calls and accessing
some news Web sites.

Representatives from major local phone companies and wireless carriers
said early indications show little physical damage to their networks,
but a crushing volume of phone calls has blocked hundreds of thousands
of callers from connecting with family, friends and coworkers. Most of
the major phone companies have requested that people refrain from
flooding their networks with calls.

Despite the damage in New York and also in Washington, D.C., the
nation's phone and Internet networks continued to operate and carry
phone calls and data. As the phone networks became congested, many
people turned to the Net for information--though intense traffic swamped
many major news sites.

Few details of the Internet's health were readily available Tuesday;
network traffic-monitoring firms such as Keynote Systems were scrambling
to compile data.

"We don't know a lot yet. We're still trying to get details, but so far
the Internet backbone isn't being affected," Keynote spokeswoman Mary
Lindsay said. "There's no significant Internet infrastructure through
the World Trade Center. It's primarily used for radio and TV
broadcasting...However, there may be a lot of servers in there. But by
and large, the real estate's too expensive there for housing many
Internet and telecom servers...This doesn't mean there aren't regional
access problems. And in fact, we know there are."

The Internet, originally designed decades ago as a military and
educational network, was built in part as a way for communications to
withstand nuclear attack by ensuring that messages could travel between
points in the United States even if a major hub were destroyed.

This type of redundancy has been maintained as the Net has changed into
a commercial network, even as engineers have spent more time focusing on
routing around traffic jams and fiber-optic cable cuts than on potential
nuclear devastation.

Regional networks affected Nevertheless, the networks that carry data
traffic are physical, not virtual, and redundancies have occasionally
been strained to or beyond their limits. Simple accidents, such as a
fiber cut or this year's Baltimore train wreck, can isolate a region or
slow traffic going in and out of a local area.

Although the Internet's major coast-to-coast backbone connections appear
to have been unscathed, regional phone and fiber-optic networks likely
were affected.

Some local circuits on the Sprint network in New York, which supply
phone and Internet connections to area businesses, ran under the World
Trade Center and were damaged, according to the company. Sprint has
routed calls to other circuits in order to keep the flow of calls going.
Sprint spokeswoman Robin Carlson said that the volume of calls is
"enormous" and that the company, too, is asking callers outside of both
New York and Washington to limit calls to the area.

Sprint has also opened up all of its PCS stores in the New York area so
people can make outgoing calls on the phones in these stores, she said.

Verizon Communications (VZ - news), the primary local phone company
serving New York, Washington and much of the nation's Northeast region,
reported no network damage.

Companies struggle to handle calls By the afternoon, cell phone service
was resuming in Manhattan and in Washington, D.C., according to reader
e-mails from the area. Carriers however continued to warn users not to
make unnecessary calls so lines could remain free for emergency calls.

Between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. EDT in Washington, D.C., Cingular said there
was a 400 percent increase in the number of people who dialed a number
and hit a phone's "send" button. The rest of the Cingular network
experienced a 200 to 250 percent increase in attempted calls.

Cingular also said a number of antennas that power phone networks was
destroyed as a result of the explosion at the Pentagon. Sprint hardware
was also damaged, the company said.

Security is also being heightened across many carriers' networks.
Cingular, for example, has put its network on "high alert". The company
did not comment further.

Representatives from Verizon said hundreds of calls were unable to
connect. The company is redirecting base stations and other gear in
other parts of the country to the New York City area to help deal with
the crush of calls.

"Demand is outpacing our ability to handle all the calls," Verizon
Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace said.

AT&amp;T has asked for all callers not to call the New York City area. They
are pleading with people to restrict their calls only to emergency
purposes.

"There is an unbelievable volume of calls," AT&amp;T spokesman Ritch Blasi
said.

Similarly, an SBC Communications spokesman requested that people stay
off cell phones as much as possible, particularly in New York and
Washington, D.C.

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